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Copyright to this image is held by the Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area, City of Glendale Parks & Recreation and is provided for educational purposes only. Call 623-930-4200 for additional information.

Ruth Sparks Byrne
November 16, 2009
Interviewer: John Akers
Re: Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area
Glendale Arizona Oral History Project
Project director: Diane Neville
Transcribed by: Jardee Transcription, Tucson, Arizona
AKERS: This is John Akers with the Sahuaro Ranch Park Historic Area Oral History Project. Today I’m interviewing Ruth Byrne. It is November 16, 2009, and we are in the Guest House at Sahuaro Ranch. Ruth, how long have you lived in Glendale?
BYRNE: Well, I lived here two times: I lived here about thirteen years before I was married, and then was away for thirty years, and then in 1972 we came back, so you do the math! (chuckles)
AKERS: What is your earliest memory of Sahuaro Ranch?
BYRNE: Growing up in Glendale, this was just a place that you knew was here, but I had no knowledge of it at all.
AKERS: Did you know any of the owners or anybody growing up?
BYRNE: Shortly before I was married, I worked in the bank and some of the Smiths—Dick Smith—came in the bank, and some of the granddaughters, but that’s about all I knew.
AKERS: That was the Valley National Bank?
BYRNE: Yes, in downtown Glendale.
AKERS: Did you know anyone else who worked here, people who might have come out and worked on the ranch?
BYRNE: George Williams, who was the manager here for many years, he came to the bank frequently. The Glendale Pharmacy was right next door to the bank, and people would come to the bank and go over there and have Cokes, and we used to talk to George when we took our breaks and had Cokes, so we knew him.
AKERS: What was the time frame of George Williams, or when you worked at the bank?
BYRNE: Well, that was 1940 through 1943.
AKERS: Do you know how long George had been the manager here?
BYRNE: No, I don’t. I understand from the stories, that he came as Mrs. Smith’s chauffer, and later worked himself up to ranch [manager].
AKERS: As you just said, you went away for a bit, and then moved back with your husband.
BYRNE: Right.
AKERS: So were you in Glendale when the City of Glendale purchased Sahuaro Ranch?
BYRNE: I think so. It seems to me that George and I came out here for a groundbreaking or something shortly after they purchased. They didn’t actually do anything for some time. George Renner was mayor at the time.
AKERS: When you came out for the groundbreaking?
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: Do you remember about what year that was?
BYRNE: Well, I think it was 1977 that they actually bought the ranch.
AKERS: Okay. When did you get involved with the Glendale Historical Society?
BYRNE: Well, I think it was after the historical society was involved in Sahuaro Ranch. I think when they first bought it, many people from the historical society came out here, and some of the people who had tractors brought tractors and helped do some clean-up and so forth. And then after the city took possession of it and realized what they had to do, they realized they’d have a liability if they let too many people do things, so they sort of changed the tenor out here, and the society didn’t do much of anything then until they gave us the Guest House in October of 1985.
AKERS: Did you know how the society got involved in that early stage, when you said they were coming out with tractors?
BYRNE: Well, it was just a city thing. Everybody was excited about it, that they got this big ranch. There was a lot of interest in the ranch when the city first bought it.
AKERS: Why do you think there was a lot of interest?
BYRNE: Well, it was a historic ranch, and both this ranch and the Manistee ranches were sort of landmarks. Even though you didn’t see much of this ranch, you knew it was here. So it was something very different for the city, to obtain this historic ranch.
AKERS: Do you remember the names of any of the people who were involved in the early phase with the society, who were coming out and doing clean-ups?
BYRNE: Well, Byron Peck was very much involved, and I think he sort of acted as a liaison with Dick Smith in making sure the sale went through and so forth. Max Klass, when he was mayor, was the one who obtained the money. And then Sterling Ridge, when he was mayor, worked. And George Renner was actually mayor, I think, when we finally started developing the ranch.
AKERS: Okay. You said that the society got more formally involved with Sahuaro Ranch around 1985.
BYRNE: That’s when they actually…. By that time they had hired the people to do the planning of the ranch and restore the buildings and so forth. Actually, the first building they restored on the ranch was the Adobe House. The Phoedalian Women’s Club was very involved with that. They had worked as volunteers. They were an active group of women, some of them lived in Phoenix, some lived in Glendale, and they furnished the Adobe House to begin with, and gave the trees that lined the driveway out here. So they were involved, and so were we. But when we had the dedication of the Adobe House, by that time I was president of the historical society, and I remember that I had to give a little talk at that time, so that was the first building we had open.
AKERS: Would you put that sometime around 1985, 1987, somewhere in there?
BYRNE: Well, that was before ’85. It was probably in ’84. It could have been ’84.
AKERS: You said the Phoedalians were involved, they donated the trees along what is Mountain View, the Mountain View entrance?
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: So the Phidaleons were active on the ranch prior to the society coming back?
BYRNE: Yeah, they were there before the society came into the Guest House. But the historical society was involved with the Phoedalians too.
AKERS: Were you president at the time when the society came to Sahuaro Ranch?
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: So how did that come about? How did you get involved, or how was the society invited here, or how did that arrangement come about?
BYRNE: Well, I think there was always the idea that the society would be involved in the research and so forth out here. We were not consulted, I don’t believe, in—well, some consultation, but not much—in the plans of the restoration and so forth, because they hired professional people, as they should have, to do that. But my recollection, Lee Stanley, who was the head of Parks and Recreation, was very involved in the development of the ranch. He asked me to come into his office and showed me the plans of the Guest House then, and said that the city would expect the historical society to man the Guest House and so forth. Of course that was big news for us, and we were delighted with the idea. And I think Byron Peck probably used his influence, because he worked with the historical society. The historical society was new, and all the really old-timers were involved in it in those days, so they all were pushing for the historical society. We didn’t have a home, and this would have been a headquarters for us.
AKERS: Did the society, prior to that, want to found a museum, or do anything like that?
BYRNE: Well, they had an accumulation of some things, yes. They had some museum things, and I’m not even sure if they were stored in different people’s homes and so forth.
AKERS: When you were invited to come back to Sahuaro Ranch, did they talk about what they hoped that the society would do, or what your role would be out here?
BYRNE: Well, we worked with Jim Woodward, who the city had hired to develop a plan for the ranch. He was the one who did a little session to teach us how to tour guide out here and so forth. So many of the things we talk about today came from our sessions with Jim Woodward. The historical society meetings were very much involved with Sahuaro Ranch. Jim Woodward would come and speak to us.
I think the first research on the ranch, there were members of the historical society involved. I’m sort of taking this out of sequence, is that all right?
AKERS: That’s fine.
BYRNE: And some of it I only know by hearing other people tell the stories. But Thelma Heatwole helped prepare the first application to be on the National Register. But the information that the first group had was not correct. They thought that Augustus Bartlett, who was the man whose wife founded the Heard Museum and so forth, lived in South Phoenix, and they thought that he was the Bartlett that owned this ranch. And then after they hired Jim Woodward, he discovered that it was William Henry Bartlett, and a whole different group of Bartletts. So the historical society was involved, very much so. And it seems to me that they had begun to collect things and were storing them in the packing shed. Penney’s moved, and they gave them a lot of showcases and various things in town. There was a big upheaval in Glendale. They were building a shopping center and some of the downtown stores were moving and so forth, and they gave things to the historical society.
AKERS: This shopping center, is that Valley West Mall?
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: Can you kind of talk about when you got involved with the society, what was kind of your impressions of Sahuaro Ranch when you came out on the property?
BYRNE: I thought it was a very interesting place. By the time we moved into the house, it’d already been restored, so the history was interesting. People came out here and built this house with all these bathrooms and so forth. It was an interesting thing. We later have thought perhaps some of the restoration could have been a little different. For instance, the main floor of the Guest House has four bathrooms and closets. Each bedroom had its own private bathroom and closet. And originally there were drawers in each closet. I suspect this was easier than shipping furniture out here. But when they restored it, they took two of the bathrooms out, and the others just made the restrooms and took the drawers completely out of the closet, which we think we would like to have had one set left, so people could see what it really looked like.
AKERS: What did the society do with the Guest House when you moved in here? What kind of programs did you have, and how did you use the space?
BYRNE: Well, we had one of our first meetings in here, and the room was not big enough for a meeting. And because there was a lot of interest in the town at that point, in the things. And we did have some Christmas parties here and so forth. We got the ranch in October, and by the next spring we were doing tours. That was after Jim Woodward…. We all sat out on the lawn and Jim gave us the story of the ranch, and what we should do. And of course we slowly moved artifacts in here, and furniture and so forth. It was just a slow thing.
We had some really great tour guides at first: Glenn Burton who was our superintendent of schools, was a tour guide here every Sunday for many years. Alfred Duncan, a retired druggist, came every Saturday and Sunday, and his wife helped too. And then we had another man, Hubert Humphrey, who had tour guided someplace in Nebraska. He came here and just fell in love with the place, and got very interested in W. J. Murphy and his relationship to the town, and the irrigation and so forth. And he even became quite friendly with Murphy’s son, Merwin. And then it wasn’t long until Julia Phillips came out and volunteered. So we had a great [group] of tour guides, and many times on Sundays we’d do 200 people. Everybody wanted to see this ranch, and in those days there wasn’t much competition, there were not many other places that were having this sort of thing. So we had a great time out here doing this.
In 1986, a young couple asked us if they could use the rose garden to get married in. They wanted to use the house to dress in. Well, we had no idea what a nonprofit could do, as far as getting into business or anything, so we did some research and found out it would be alright for us to do that, and I think we charged the first couple forty dollars. We did about three or four weddings that year, and decided that would be one way that we could help support ourselves. Because we came out here, the agreement was that we would pay our own utilities and maintain the air conditioning system and so forth—which, of course, we had no income to do that, we just did it on faith I guess. So the weddings helped us prevail, and later the city did take over the maintenance of the building.
AKERS: So the weddings started accidentally. It was somebody coming up, wanting to get married.
BYRNE: Right. It was not our idea, somebody just came and wanted a wedding. And then another person wanted a wedding, so we just sort of fell into that.
AKERS: It was all word of mouth at first?
BYRNE: Yes. Yeah, we’ve never really advertised our weddings.
AKERS: You said 1986 was the first wedding?
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: About how many have you had, say, through 2009?
BYRNE: Yesterday we did our 1,444th wedding here.
AKERS: Wow. Were all the weddings out in the rose garden?
BYRNE: Yes, except for occasional rain, and we have had to move some of them inside, which isn’t perfect, but we did get them married.
AKERS: Do a lot of the society volunteers help with the wedding program?
BYRNE: Yeah, it’s all volunteer work.
AKERS: Tell me about the rose garden. Was it here when the society got involved?
BYRNE: They had started on the rose garden, yes, and the Glendale Women’s Club was very involved with the rose garden, and Luella Stair was one of the women who really was the one that pushed for the rose garden, and did an awful lot of the work herself. And they got donations from families for roses—families and groups and so forth out there.
AKERS: Because they had to completely build the rose garden.
BYRNE: Yes, the rose garden was not there. The city, I’m sure, did the building, and then the women’s club, with help from the historical society. But I think we have to give the women’s club more credit for anybody, doing the rose garden. Luella Stair actually did a lot of maintenance and trimming on it early on.
AKERS: Do you know where the idea came from about rebuilding the rose garden?
BYRNE: Probably just a part of the plan. Jim Woodward did this plan about what to do, and I think that was probably part of the plan.
AKERS: Has the rose garden changed much since it’s been built?
BYRNE: No. The roses have gotten bigger.
AKERS: You said you thought the Glendale Women’s Club was involved with it. Were there other groups involved with the rose garden? The garden club, I had heard.
BYRNE: At various times. The maintenance of the rose garden was always a tremendous responsibility, and they tried a lot of different ways, having different groups keeping the roses trimmed and so forth. It didn’t always work out. We’ve had a lot of different things. Right now we have a rose garden association that’s really helping us, but we have had various rose societies in Glendale helped from time to time. And as I say, the women’s club. Probably Luella was the only one in the women’s club that did an awful lot of the maintenance and so forth.
AKERS: We were talking earlier about the Adobe House and the Phoedalian Society, working on that. What was the society’s role in that?
BYRNE: Well, when we first started doing tours, they were doing tours out there. But they were a small group, so it just finally, after a short period of time, they said, “We just can’t provide these tours for the Adobe House.” So the historical society took over that. So at one time on weekends we were doing tours of this house [i.e., the Guest House], the Adobe House, and the Foreman’s House.
AKERS: What was the Foreman’s House used for?
BYRNE: Well, it had displays of the history there, and had a video. And then it had an upstairs with more displays. They were all telling the history of that house and the portion it played.
AKERS: About how long was the society involved in providing tours of these other places?
BYRNE: Well, until the foundation took over. The Main House had not been restored. We did some tours through it even before it was restored. You remember you helped write a script for us, when we got the Theater Works to play the parts of the different characters. That was very well attended, a lot of people came to see that.
AKERS: That was 1995, I think, with the 100th anniversary of part of the house being built.
BYRNE: Yes, that’s right, that was the anniversary of the time the house was built. You know, the city, during various recessions and so forth, didn’t, I don’t think, have the money to spend. So somebody came up—I think it was when Quentin Tolby was mayor—came up with the idea of establishing a foundation out here, and they could then raise the money for the running of the house, ranch, and so forth. So this looked good on paper. It never really turned out to be a tremendous success. The historical society had already been here. The foundation came in, and we didn’t always see eye-to-eye, and had a few problems. It was sort of a hard thing to establish, who had responsibility for what, and so forth. Anyway, at that point, we were no longer doing the Foreman’s House nor the Adobe House.
AKERS: Okay. Were there other organizations working out here as well, when the society first got involved? Like the tractor association?
BYRNE: Yes. Now the tractor association came in…. I think probably the first time they were here was at one of our town picnics. Oh, the first town picnic we had after the restoration of the Guest House and so forth, after we were here, was a terrific fair, just hundreds and hundreds of people came out to it. The early events we had out here were just…. As I say, we were the only show in town at that time, and we really had tremendous crowds.
AKERS: So it was called a town picnic?
BYRNE: It was, yes, the first one we had.
AKERS: And the city put those on?
BYRNE: Yes, but they had a lot of people who made donations. The candy companies gave us foot-long Butterfingers to hand out to people—all that sort of thing. We had a lot of donations. We had carriage riding around the ranch.
AKERS: How many years did the city have the town picnics out here at Sahuaro Ranch?
BYRNE: Well, I remember two, definitely, and I think they had several. Even after the foundation took over, they still had the…. It eventually sort of became the tractor show, but it was the town picnic for several years.
AKERS: Okay, so that evolved into the tractor show?
BYRNE: Uh-huh.
AKERS: And you said that’s how the Arizona Tractor Association got involved, was through those?
BYRNE: Right. The idea of the foundation was that the arts council and the tractor [association] and the historical society would all be represented on the foundation board.
AKERS: Because those were already organizations involved out here.
BYRNE: The arts council had sort of requested that the city give them someplace to display, too, thought the ranch could carry more people. And at one time they thought maybe it’d be a good idea to make the Main House into an art museum. And of course there also was, during the early years, during George Renner’s mayorship, we let the Main House become an elegant restaurant. And that was advertised in national restaurant magazines for years, and nobody took us up on it, fortunately.
AKERS: Trying to get a vendor to come in and take it over?
BYRNE: They were going to do a turnkey operation, let them come in and run a restaurant. And we had council workshops where we went down and talked—Glenn Burton and I went down and talked against the restaurant. They never really had an offer, so it never happened.
We supposedly had funds one time to do the restoration of the Main House and it didn’t take place. But after the foundation was formed, the city did go ahead and restore the Main House.
AKERS: So that was around 1996 that the Main House was restored? So we’re talking about maybe nine, ten years after the Guest House?
BYRNE: Uh-huh.
AKERS: Was the Glendale Historical Society very involved with the decisions on how the Main House was restored?
BYRNE: Yes, I think we were consulted, and then Carol DeCosmo, who was the head of the foundation, consulted us on the furniture and the rugs and the carpeting, and she was very talented in that regard, and I think the house still shows her work that she did on the house. It’s very beautifully arranged.
We did things like some of the things we saved here, that came out of various storages, and we would end up with them: like the original drapes that the Smiths had—or at least the ones that they had when the house was sold to the city. So they were able to make copies of those, and that sort of thing.
AKERS: Oh! So those are reproductions of the original drapes?
BYRNE: Yes they are, uh-huh.
AKERS: That’s really interesting. Some other questions: When you first came out to Sahuaro Ranch, were the peafowl here, the peacocks and the peahens?
BYRNE: Oh yes, many, many, many peacocks. They were living off the land then, so they wandered around all over the ranch. This house did not have the balcony restored at that time. We had a little cement wall right in front. There was a little cement porch and little cement wall on the edge of it, and the peacocks would stand on that, and then fly up and roost in the top of the house. The male peacocks roosted on the house, the females roosted in the trees. And we had many, many. Peacocks came to our weddings. In fact, we have a picture of one bride and groom, with a peacock with its tail all spread.
AKERS: Would you say there were more than today? Or are there more today than then?
BYRNE: Oh no, there were many more then.
AKERS: Now, did the peafowl become a popular feature of the park?
BYRNE: Yes, they were, very much so. And people still ask us, “Where are the peacocks?”
AKERS: What about the chickens? When did the chickens arrive?
BYRNE: There were not many chickens wandering around at that time. That was when we first came out here—there were peacocks, but no chickens.
AKERS: This was about the mid 1990s, late 1990s, we had more chickens out here?
BYRNE: Yes. People began, I think, to drop their Easter chickens out here or something, and they multiplied.
AKERS: Let’s talk a little bit more about Jim Woodward and the master plan. You said that Jim Woodward trained society members. Did the society help Woodward do research on the plan or on the ranch?
BYRNE: Some did, but mostly he did the research. He sent people over to New Mexico. University of New Mexico has reams of information about Bartlett, because he had the huge ranch in New Mexico after he left here. And so they had a lot of the correspondence and so forth that he did about this ranch. That was very helpful, because we know what he was writing out here, telling them what to do and so forth. And Woodward, after his research, donated all his research papers that he finally wrote, to the society. So we have them in our library, so anybody that wants to become a tour guide and really become knowledgeable can read those books, and you can see in certain time periods what they were doing. We know that in 1898 they got a telephone, because we have the notes and the things that say, “We now are connected by wire.”
AKERS: Doing the master plan, there was a series of public meetings where the plan was developed? Or how was that process? You told me who had the idea for the foundation, but….
BYRNE: Oh, they formed a steering committee. There were several of us from the historical society on the steering committee, and other civic leaders and various people.
AKERS: We talked about the tractor association being involved out here, and about the arts council coming in. Were you aware when the Arizona Artist Blacksmith Association came out to Sahuaro Ranch, and how they got involved?
BYRNE: Well, I think they were probably here at some of the town picnics originally. And those were planned by the city, you know. And then the foundation, I think, used the blacksmith people. So they have been out here for many years.
AKERS: Were there any other organizations that you can think of that had a role out at Sahuaro Ranch, or that were doing things?
BYRNE: Well, I would say the Rotary Club gave us some great tour guides. As I say, Glenn Burton and the others there encouraged other people in the Rotary Club. So when we had special events, some of them came out here and helped us—some of the retired principals and teachers that Glenn knew also came out. A lot of people in the community have helped out here for many years.
AKERS: Speaking of those different groups, when did the barnyard start getting used as a space? Or was it used, until recently?
BYRNE: Well, we began to collect farm equipment and so forth and store it in the barnyard, but it was not on our standard tours or anything, so it wasn’t really developed until after the foundation was formed, or maybe after the city took it over again, I think it’s had more development, and is open for tours.
AKERS: Can you think of any other organizations that might have done something out here? Oh, you mentioned the Rotary. Since you’ve been out here giving tours for a while and doing weddings, have you met anyone who lived, worked, or visited Sahuaro Ranch back when it was a working ranch?
BYRNE: Yes! Yes, occasionally we run across somebody that has lived here. I’ve found people who lived in the Foreman’s House. I guess during World War II when housing was very short, that building, which is not very big, they had about four families living in there. And I talked to one lady—the Foreman’s House was not built with any restrooms, despite the fact that the other houses had so many! But they built a little frame addition on the side, but you had to go outside to get to it. It was connected to the house, but you still had to step outside. So I remember asking this one woman who told me she lived there, I said, “Well, didn’t you mind having to go outside to get to the bathroom? And she said, “Well, I’d never lived in a house with indoor plumbing before, so it seemed great to me!” I guess eventually, Dick Smith said, somebody knocked a hole in the kitchen wall so they could get to the bathroom there. But when the city restored it, they took out that little building that was added with the bathroom, so that it now is just as it was built in about 1900.
AKERS: You mentioned Dick Smith. Did you work a lot with him?
BYRNE: Yes, we did, and he was very helpful. He came and did a lecture which we taped, but our tape wasn’t very good, so we really can’t get much out of it. We still remember a lot of the things. He told us about his mother bringing the peacocks out here. However, those were not the first peacocks. There had evidently been peacocks at the ranch since its very early days, but I think the previous ones had green chests, and these had blue, so they were a different breed of peacocks. And he said at various times they sold off 150 peacocks. They just produced abundantly. She brought three peafowls [i.e., hens], and one peacock, and so they really populated the ranch.
AKERS: So he gave information. Did he loan anything, or share any objects with you about the ranch?
BYRNE: Yes, he loaned things. The fact is, we have things right in this room—that saber there, cavalry saber. We have his cavalry uniform. He gave us several pieces of furniture. We have some furniture upstairs that belonged to the Smiths. We don’t have anything that belonged to the Bartletts, but we do have things that belonged to the Smiths, that they gave us. And his wife, too, loaned us some of her things.
AKERS: Fabulous. Are there other people that we should talk to about Sahuaro Ranch, about the history of the city running it, and the different groups out there? Can you think of other names of people who’d be very knowledgeable?
BYRNE: Well, one of the troubles is people die off, John. (chuckles) Thelma Heatwole was very involved with us. She was involved in the first research and writing the things to be on the national historic preservation list. And she gave us publicity. I said we’ve never advertised about the weddings, but she’s done news stories about the weddings and so forth. So she was very involved in the ranch. And many other first members, the early members of the historical society came out here. Of course we didn’t have any help out here, or hired people to run our office, and so we had volunteer people come out and sit in the office. Most of the historical society people were very involved in this. I don’t really know all of them, because a lot of them had been involved before I came. It seems like the Moores—they lived on Northern Avenue in their retirement—but I think he was a farmer and he brought farm equipment and helped do some of the clearing early on. Brookwellyn and John Turner, and Bart Turner who was president of the historical society, they all helped considerably. The whole roster of the early…. And as I said, Byron Peck. And various families made donations of artifacts: the Jacks. And of course they had a history on the ranch because E. E. Jack was the ranch manager for one period out here. They helped.
AKERS: So his wife was involved in the city government?
BYRNE: Lettie Jack, yes. They lived out here on the ranch. They lived in the Main House. I think she cooked for a lot of workers and did all sorts of things. They also had the very first meeting of the women’s club, very first social of the Glendale Women’s Club, was held out on the veranda of the house next door.
AKERS: Today the historical society operates a second ranch as well?
BYRNE: Yes, it does. In the 1990s, the Manistee Ranch, John and Marie’s aunts were both passed away, and so their children decided to dispose of the ranch, and had given an option to one of the grocery chains for the corner of the ranch which the old house was on and so forth, for that whole property. So there was a threat for a while that that house would be torn down and so forth. At that time, the mayor formed a task force, and a lot of citizens were on that task force, to see what could be done. We had architects and historians, bankers and so forth. We met pretty regular, and the citizens became very interested too. They wrote letters in support of saving the ranch house. Dick Coffinger was head of the downtown redevelopment, I believe, at that time, and he became involved and discovered that there were two pots of money you could get grants from, and one would be historic preservation, and the other was historic parks, I believe—or at least parks. And so the historical society then…. Oh, what’s the man’s name that’s head of the historic preservation?
AKERS: The commission? Or the state office?
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: Jim Garrison?
BYRNE: Jim Garrison! Okay, Jim Garrison came out to talk to us, and he suggested that the historical society apply for the grant to save the house, and then the city could apply for the parks. So we did that, and first the city won the award, which was probably at that time the highest award they’d ever given. The Sands family also agreed to come up with some of the money for the ranch. We had to work out an agreement with them, though. They truly wanted to sell that one corner for commercial development. And there was an adobe house in there that had been built by Louis Sands, Jr., and his wife. That would have to be sacrificed. So historic preservation, that commission downtown, was involved in that too. They finally decided that since the adobe house had rarely been viewed by anybody, it had always had trees around it, it was not a landmark—the other house was, and had more history—so they agreed with the Sands that if they would donate toward the other house, that we would have no objections to selling the other property. So that’s the way it worked out.
So the historical society, from that point on, has had two homes, and we run tours in both places, and so forth, which has stretched us a little thin. And like most volunteer organizations in today’s world, we’re hurting for volunteers.
AKERS: You mentioned the Historic Preservation Commission. Of course you were a long-time member of that as well.
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: Were you involved in getting the commission started, or were you one of the first commissioners?
BYRNE: I was not involved in getting it started, but I was on the first board of commissioners appointed.
AKERS: That was the early 1990s?
BYRNE: Yes, uh-huh. And we pretty much copied what Phoenix was doing insofar as writing our plans and so forth at that time. And it has been very successful in the past few years, getting a lot of things done. Ron Short has been the liaison from the city to the society, and he certainly has done a tremendous job. He has taken the society members out, the commission members out to various sites to see what we’re doing in historic preservation. I guess we have more things now on the National Register of Historic Places than any town in … well, maybe not Phoenix, but any other town in the valley or the state.
AKERS: You just went off recently, the last couple of years?
BYRNE: No, I’m still on the board. I’m currently on it. My term will end in April. I doubt if I’ll be appointed again. (laughs)
AKERS: What do you personally consider the big, maybe two or three, accomplishments of the Historic Preservation Commission in the time you’ve been on there?
BYRNE: The fact that we have historic preservation on some of these places. We have not, in the last few years, actually done the local designation as historic places, which actually protects the property, but we have the national register, and we could go back and get the local designation too as historic property. Of course the national register doesn’t protect the property, but it gives people a pause before they do anything to their property. Catlin Court was our first big thing. I think you remember that, John, because you were chair of the thing when we actually succeeded to getting the local on that.
AKERS: Getting the local designation on it.
BYRNE: Uh-huh.
AKERS: Anything else you want to say about Sahuaro Ranch, or the society’s role out here, or anything else I haven’t asked you about that I should have?
BYRNE: Well right now we’re really partnering with the city and the Rose Garden Society to keep the rose garden maintained. We have not always been able to all work together, and we’re doing that, and are very pleased with the accomplishments that the rose garden people have made. And some of our people out there too have helped out. The rose garden looks beautiful right now. It usually does in November and December. It recovers from the summer doldrums. But the roses are going to be trimmed in January, and then they should be beautiful by late March and early April. That rose garden is a glorious thing when it’s actually in bloom. It’s just unbelievably beautiful. Going backwards in time again, the Bartletts’ daughter was married here at the ranch, and the newspaper article said she was married in front of a sea of roses, so we have to assume that the rose garden has always been there. And the early newspapers have articles about the rose garden, and how young men who were rather hard up, on a date would bring their girlfriends out to Sahuaro Ranch and pick the roses, and they’d have a nice date with little expense.
AKERS: A cheap date, and cheap access to flowers.
BYRNE: Yes.
AKERS: A good story! Okay, well thank you very much for your time today, talking with us about Sahuaro Ranch.
BYRNE: Well, we’ll both think of things that we didn’t remember to say!
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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